Defeat of Prop. 93 will test Legislature

Prop. 93: Legislature will be tested trying to solve state budget crisis with 3 of its top 4 members pushed out of office this year

Matthew Yi, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau

Published
4:00 am PST, Thursday, February 7, 2008

California voters' rejection of a ballot initiative that would have allowed state lawmakers facing term limits to keep their jobs longer is expected to create more challenges for the Legislature, which already faces the huge problem of solving the state's looming $14.5 billion budget deficit.

Among the 34 lawmakers who will be looking for new jobs at the end of this year are three of the Legislature's four leaders: Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, D-Los Angeles, Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, and Senate Minority leader Dick Ackerman, R-Irvine.

With those legislators becoming lame ducks, there probably will be intense politicking inside the Legislature in the following weeks and months as lawmakers jockey to succeed those caucus leaders.

Proposition 93 would have given those legislators a chance to keep their jobs longer by allowing them to serve 12 years in one house of the Legislature. Current term limits law sets a maximum of six years in the Assembly and eight years in the Senate, for a total of 14 years.

But Prop. 93 was defeated. With nearly 99 percent of the state's precincts reporting, 53 percent of the voters rejected the measure. The highly contested initiative was the brainchild of Núñez, who hired his top political consultant, Gail Kaufman, to lead the campaign for the measure.

The rejection of the measure is expected to spark intense campaigning among legislators over who will become the new leaders. That will not only become a distraction within the Legislature, but could hinder Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who needs to negotiate with lawmakers to fix the state's fiscal crisis.

"When the governor looks for the big cheese, all he's going to find are a group of mice," said John Pitney Jr., a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College.

For the past couple of years, Núñez had been the Republican governor's main cohort in hammering out agreements on key issues such as curbing global warming, increasing the minimum wage and reforming health care - a campaign that stalled last week in the Senate Health Committee.

But on Wednesday, Schwarzenegger, who endorsed Prop. 93, told reporters that the lawmakers are to blame for the failure of the measure.

"I think it's very clear that the people felt that the legislators have not performed well enough that they deserve a change there," he said at a news conference in north Sacramento to highlight the need to fix levees in that area.

Perata said Schwarzenegger could have been more involved in promoting Prop. 93, calling the governor's efforts minimal. Perata said he intends to lead the Senate until near the end of the legislative session in August. He called a Senate Democratic caucus meeting for today.

His main motivation is to ensure that the leadership question doesn't destabilize the Senate, Perata said.

Ackerman also plans to meet with his Republican colleagues today but wasn't sure when he would step down.

"There's no magic answer about a specific date," he said, adding that that decision will be made by his caucus.

Núñez scheduled a caucus today in the Assembly, his spokesman Steve Maviglio said.

The speaker has "had an outpouring of support from members today," Maviglio said Wednesday. "He wants an orderly transition ... and he'll talk about that at the caucus meeting."